It was an afterthought that turned into a deadly encounter and nearly cost Oskar Zepeda his life.

Zepeda, an Army staff sergeant on his ninth deployment to the Middle East, was leading a platoon of men in Logar, Afghanistan, searching for Taliban fighters. They had cleared a compound of houses, Zepeda said, when he noticed a small cupola on top of one of the buildings.

“I told my guys, ‘Let’s clear that.’ ”

Two Taliban were hiding in the small room. Zepeda and his men struggled with them. One had a grenade and blew himself up, taking parts of Zepeda with him.

Much of Zepeda’s right thigh was torn away, and his right arm was ripped open, severing his brachial artery, a major blood vessel. He nearly bled to death.

“It was real scary,” he said. “You tell your mind, ‘Keep breathing. Stay alive.’ I was praying and begging (God) to spare my life. I was praying to see my kids again.”

A medical evacuation helicopter whisked him to safety and he woke up in a hospital in Germany.

Five years later, Zepeda, 32, who has a tattoo of a grenade on the left side of his neck, is still undergoing surgeries – he’s had more than 30 so far – to rebuild his damaged leg. He’s thankful to be alive.

And this Thanksgiving, Zepeda, his wife and their two children, have even more to be grateful for.

In August, Pulte Group’s Built to Honor program, along with Operation Finally Home, gave the Zepeda family a 2,000-square-foot home in Perris. The two agencies are among several nationwide that provide mortgage-free homes to injured veterans.

The process took more than a year, and Zepeda applied to more than one organization. He said Operation Finally Home kept him in limbo for a while, even after it had approved him. The organization wanted to make his approval a noteworthy occasion. In this case, they shared it with a stadium full of people.

In November 2015, Zepeda and five other wounded veterans were invited to a UCLA football game. At halftime they stood in the middle of the field and were presented with the game ball. As they headed toward the sidelines, Zepeda said, officials stopped him and his wife, Lisa.

The couple was directed to the end zone. Photos of him during his military service were flashed on the scoreboard screen as his achievements were recapped.

Then the couple was presented with a giant certificate for their free home.

“I was choked up and she was crying,” he said.

It proved to be milestone in Zepeda’s journey back.

That journey was marked not only by the pain of the ongoing surgeries, but by a dark emotional chapter as well.

A 10-year Army veteran, Zepeda served with special forces and spent three years as a sniper.

When he returned to duty at Fort Lewis in Washington after the grenade blast, he was limited in what he could do. He was put in charge of organizing the schedule for the base rehab and exercise facility. The work frustrated him, he said. And the demons of battle raised their heads.

“PTSD hit me right then and there,” he said. “I didn’t even know where the hell I was. I had so much hate and anger. I pushed my whole family away.”

He started seeing a psychiatrist, but it didn’t seem to help, he said. He was determined to stay off medication. He had tried it briefly, he said, but it just made him sleep all the time.

“For a whole year, I couldn’t be in public,” he said.

If he went to the store with his wife, he would feel overwhelmed within minutes.

“I’d tell her, ‘I have to get out of here,’” he said. “I couldn’t stand it.”

Even at home, he was hypervigilant and paranoid.

“At night time, I thought my wife was trying to kill me,” he said.

He sat up at night, convinced his home was under threat of attack.

“I thought about how people would come if they were trying to get in,” he said. “I’d be figuring out the sight lines.”

Lisa, 33, said she’s not sure how their marriage survived.

“I don’t know how I did it,” she said, standing in the kitchen of their new home holding Ryder, the couple’s six-month old son. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to give up. I knew I was the only person he had. I couldn’t just turn my back on him.”

He wasn’t the same man she remembered falling in love with.

They met in 2009. Oskar was preparing for another deployment and was visiting a buddy in Los Angeles. They were at a piano bar at Universal City Walk when he saw Lisa.

“He approached me,” Lisa said. “He’s definitely not shy. I thought he was very interesting and he was hilarious. Oskar is one of the funniest people I’ve met in my whole life.”

They discovered they had grown up just a block away from one another in Sylmar, though they’d never met. She had a daughter, Sophia, now 8. He was separated with three kids of his own, who now live in Tennessee. Over the next week, they saw each other every day.

Then he shipped out. She sent him care packages while he was in Iraq. And when he returned, she flew to Washington to be with him.

But two years later, in the aftermath of his injuries, the laughter was gone.

In October 2013, Oskar began a month-long stay at a rehabilitation center in Portland. He was not an addict, but the regimen there shared features with such programs. He had as many as seven counseling sessions in a day.

Zepeda had been stationed for several years at Fort Lewis in Washington. Part of the application process for the veterans home program required he and Lisa not have an existing mortgage. They sold their Puyallup home in 2014, shortly after he left the Army, and they moved in with Lisa’s parents in Sylmar.

A little more than a year later, they were standing on the field at the UCLA game, excited about having their own home again.

In the interim, Oskar had worked briefly for Homeland Security in computer forensics, tracking down pedophiles. But the daily exposure to child pornography got to him and he quit.

His continued surgeries, he said, kept him from returning to school for a while. He figures he still has several surgeries to endure over the coming year, to stretch the skin on his thigh and add fat to fill out a gaping dent, but he recently enrolled at Riverside City College. He hopes to get a degree in either computer forensics or nursing.

On Thanksgiving, the couple expects a crowd of about 30 in their new home. Oskar said he offered to serve as host for this year’s gathering shortly after they got the new home. On Tuesday, a frozen turkey sat thawing on the kitchen counter.

Their new home, they say, is more than they imagined, even though they had a hand in choosing the layout, the colors and the décor.

“Once we saw it, we were like, ‘Wow!’” Lisa said.

It came completely furnished, including appliances, an outdoor grill and even decorative touches such as a set of colored vases on a shelf and a framed American flag on the wall of the entryway. A folded American flag and Oskar’s military medals are on shelves next to a big screen television in the living room.

The contractor who installed the alarm and other electronic features in the house, bought the television himself, Oskar said. He was one of the many people who donated time and services.

“Stuff like this makes you a more humble person,” he said. “Everybody that did this, did it out of the kindness of their hearts. I do see people differently. It kind of restores some of your faith in humanity.”

“I honestly think we live in a very cruel world,” Lisa said. “But we’ve seen so much generosity in the last few months, it’s amazing.”

Even more than the house, she said, she appreciates having her husband.

“What I’m thankful for is him being here and being alive,” she said. “We almost did lose him.”

Mark Muckenfuss has been a reporter since 1981. He worked at various publications including the San Bernardino Sun before coming to the Press Enterprise in 1999. He covers higher education, military affairs and, when the ground shakes, earthquakes.

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